Sans the Fat Cat April 16, 2008

This one’s been making the rounds on the interweb for quite some time now, so I might as well jump on the bandwagon (albeit belatedly):

Garfield Minus Garfield is a novel if not unusual take on Jim Davis’ trademark feline. The premise: the real star of the comic strip is not Garfield but his owner John. And how to make this point? By taking your usual Garfield comic and editing out the titular fat cat.

This is perhaps best articulated by the site’s unnamed author:

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

Having grown up reading Garfield, I must say that this does cast the comic in an entirely new light, albeit in a bizarrely twisted and occasionally sad sort of way. While some of the resulting comic strips are hit-or-miss in the humor department, they are nonetheless worth checking out.